There is nothing to distort the fabric of a baseball game like the possibility of a landmark hit.
Much in the same way a supermassive object warps the space around it—playing around with standards of direction and motion and time—the quest for a milestone screws with the experience of the game. As a player draws closer to, say, Hit No. 3,000, the effect grows more pronounced. Each plate appearance feels either too slow or too fast. The inning falls out of favor as the primary unit of time: “This is his second chance tonight” communicates far more about what matters here than “It’s the fifth inning.” A strange kind of gravity develops in the lineup, where the centerpiece is not the leadoff hitter, or the cleanup guy, but him. The score feels irrelevant—the game is structured on an entirely different organizing principle. All that matters now is the pursuit of history, and the desires of the crowd will shift accordingly. (This means that a walk is now cause for disappointment and a bloop single is equivalent to a home run.) There is no escaping this feeling; it does not matter if the player is at the plate or in the field or down in the dugout. The sensation is bigger than any given moment. There is nowhere to hide: This is what it means to wait.
Such is the environment in which Miguel Cabrera has spent the last few days.
